MANY students will have to emigrate because of the bleak employment situation in Ireland, the chairman of the Higher Education Authority (HEA) admitted yesterday.

Record numbers of graduates are coming on to the job market where the worst affected by the recession are in the 20 to 24 age group.

HEA chief John Hennessy bluntly told delegates at the Union of Students in Ireland annual conference in Dunboyne, Co Meath, that "emigration, at least for a time, will be the choice that some of you, even many of you, will have to make to gain employment or advance your careers".

He argued strongly that higher education retains huge value in terms of success in getting jobs.

At the end of 2010, the unemployment rate among people with an honours degree, or above, was 7.1pc -- exactly half the national employment rate of 14.2pc at the time.